


A Heart Problem

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Ark AU, F/M, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-05-30 21:02:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6440533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ark's oxygen problem has been fixed, and there was never the need to send The Hundred to the ground. Some years after the oxygen crisis, janitor Blake meets Zero-G Reyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story basically picks up the same premise as [In The Heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5586541), but expands upon it significantly. The whole idea is based on a roleplay scenario developed with shortitude, which is why in this story, I will only be writing Bellamy's POV. Digging into Raven's head would feel like borrowing a bit too much.
> 
> My great thanks to captaindove for her sage advice!

**age five**

When Aurora’s body starts changing, Bellamy can’t really stop looking.

She explains everything to him in a hushed voice, and he listens with his eyes wide open, because his mother is amazing at explaining. She’s the best storyteller he’s seen on the entire Ark, and with this, she’s determined that he understands every step; that he helps her lie on her side in the evening, and puts his hands on her hard stomach, feeling for movements and kicks. Every morning she makes him repeat her stories back to her, and he recites like a good little soldier; don’t speak and don’t stare, don’t ask, or shout, or cry. Don’t look for help. We don’t need anyone. You’re so brave. I couldn’t have done this without you.

Of course Bellamy isn’t stupid, and he knows that this isn’t really between them alone. He can read, and he knows his books, knows about the law and about the human body, and so he understands, even if he never says it, that there must’ve been someone involved in creating the brother or sister Aurora is preparing them for. His dad hasn’t been around for a while, even if his uniform keeps appearing on and disappearing from the worktable in their quarters, and anyway, Bellamy doesn’t speak to him at all, so he couldn’t ask him even if he was allowed. He won’t ask. He has more important things to do.

His mother. His responsibility.

***

**age eleven**

His teachers have him run track every other day after school, and it’s one of the best things he’s ever had in his life.

Bellamy isn’t really a natural runner. His legs are strong, yes, but his muscles are packed tight, heavy and reassuring in their weight, made more for fighting than for fleeing. But he still loves it; loves how he can bend his body, and make it do what he wants, make it fly over the mats and move faster, faster, faster, until he’s sore in a breathless, pleasant way that wasn’t made for two, and doesn’t have to be shared between three. What a selfish little thing he is.

Before he comes back home, he takes care to wipe the smile off his face the way he hides Octavia’s toys under the floor whenever there is an inspection, and he doesn’t tell himself that if anything bad ever happens, he’ll take his sister and run as fast as he can, until they’re both safe, because he might be only eleven, but he isn’t stupid. Him playing sports gives them a little extra food, necessary enough for them to risk him being noticed by this or that teacher, and anyway, he needs good scores, needs to be strong and, more importantly, to be seen strong. He has a job to do, a plan that will keep all three of them safe if only Bellamy works hard enough, and so he lets himself have this small thing, this enjoyment from stretching and running done alone. It’s safe, or as safe as anything in his life is. Teachers don’t see. It’s not their job to look.

***

**age nineteen**

The uniform is botched, uneven seams and some very uncomfortable tightness around the left armpit, but Bellamy lets it go with rare impatience, annoyance rising in him in the least convenient moment. It’s fine, for fuck’s sake, it’s fine. Suddenly he just wants the seamstress to stop touching him, to never touch him again, as if there was something hateful in her indifferent, professional hands. It’s fine. He can fix all this himself.

In the end, it’s O who fixes the jacket for him, her face so focused and determined Bellamy immediately feels guilty for how he spoke to her when he came home from his first shift. It’s just a lot of pressure, even if he’ll never say as much, not wanting to seem ungrateful. So now he simply thanks O for her stitches, and hugs her tight before heading for target practice. 

Five days later he finds himself in a dark corner of Alpha, making out furiously with one of his fellow cadets, all greedy hands and greedy teeth, and excitement rushing into his head like a river, not that he has any idea what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. It turns out Bellamy is good with his mouth, who’d think, and the boy smells so damn nice, all Alpha soap and whatnot. 

It doesn’t last long. Bellamy can’t really trust anything that feels better than running track.

***

**age twenty two**

Even after no more than a few days, Bellamy doesn’t really remember the morning before his mother got arrested.

It was just a day, nothing profound, really, and he was sneaking around a bit, knowing he’d be going behind her back about the party. Aurora Blake had the best bullshit detector on the entire Ark, and Bellamy knew better than to be too much in her face when he was planning to disobey her.

So he doesn’t remember what were the last words he managed to say to her. When they brought him, still handcuffed, to say goodbye before she was floated, he was too choked up to as much as apologize. All he did was listen, and it turned out she had a lot to say; there was a _be strong_ and a _your responsibility_ , and _my brave boy_ dangling at the end like an afterthought, an encouragement. Don’t give up. You owe me. Don’t get angry. You still have your sister.

After that, he returns to quarters picked clean, no pieces of thread or scraps of cloth, no toys hidden too clumsily, no guard’s uniform on a hanger by the bed. Everything Bellamy or their mother traded for in the last years is gone, and replaced with standard issue, one blanket, one pair of pants, two shirts, and a coarse work uniform he doesn’t quite dare touching in case he makes it real, Bellamy Blake, discharged, janitor.

His shift starts the next day at seven.

***

**age twenty two**

The rules aren’t that hard to learn, and anyway, Bellamy is very good at following rules, especially if Octavia’s life is at stake. So now, too, he learns quickly: be home half an hour before curfew, and don’t trade even if you think you could, especially not for moonshine. Don’t ask why your shifts are often an hour longer, or why you have so many of them, all smooth and legal, perfectly legal, to the dot, and what a piece of bad luck, Unity Day duty again. Application to get a new mattress, rejected, no resources to relocate at the moment. Gym on Factory, access denied, too close to a shooting range. Janitor Blake, we are sorry to inform you that an additional scan of your genetic sample revealed a previously undiscovered mutation that unfortunately eliminates you from the gene pool. No treatment necessary.

He’s sleeping off a double shift from hell when Jake Griffin makes his announcement, so he misses most of the fuss around it; misses the small riot that breaks on Mecha, and a few bright mechanics and engineers stepping forward with ideas. One of them, a guy from work tells him with a wink, is barely eighteen, about to qualify as a Zero-G, though honestly, it’s a shame to put such an ass in a space suit, but Bellamy doesn’t give a shit about all the great asses in the world, too damn worried about the Skybox. It always goes on half the oh-two when there is a malfunction, people in the mess hall keep saying, and Bellamy needs to know if O is okay, but if he steps a foot anywhere near lockup, he’s gonna end up kissing the stars and he can’t do that, fuck, that’s one thing he can’t do, his sister, his responsibility.

The repairs take over a month, and it’s as if the whole of Mecha worked overtime, so Bellamy volunteers for overtime as well, and furiously mops the workshops after hours, praying to hear something, anything about the Skybox. It’s a new thing, listening to whispers instead of avoiding them, and risking being seen for the sake of getting news. He never learns who the almost Zero-G with a great ass is, but he does hear whispers, a meeting here, and a story there. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that people of the Ark are angry, but Bellamy has more important things to think about. He drops his gaze every time guards pass him, and sometimes they let him get away with it, but mostly, there are stares, there are sneers and rushed words he pretends not to hear, since they’re not addressed directly to him. He is, after all, all those things they’re saying. He’s a liar and a thief, and he doesn’t care. He just needs to know if his sister is okay.

Before the crisis is averted, a few people die in the Skybox; some floated, some just like that, don’t look at it too closely, Blake. This is how things are on the Ark, and they always have. Be grateful we let you live.

So Bellamy is grateful. Oh, he is so fucking grateful.

***

**age twenty three**

Six months later, a guy named Monty Green knocks on Bellamy’s door on a rare day off, and his first instinct is not to let him in out of habit, but then Monty says “Octavia”, and suddenly they spend three hours at the table together, Bellamy’s face hidden in his hands as he listens to story after story. Lockup was hard on O at first, but she’s getting better by the day, figuring things out and not taking shit from anyone. She’s playing nice, or relatively nice, if you forget about her unfortunate tendency to punch people in the dick when she doesn’t like what they’re saying. Most people deal by not saying stupid shit around her, which made Monty’s life easier during the four months he spent as one of her cellmates. He survived Skybox. She will, too.

Monty, as it turns out, has to return to Farm even though he’d previously been recruited by engineering, because the Ark’s mercy only goes so far, even if he’s allowed to live. It doesn’t matter, Bellamy tells himself sternly. Monty will waste a few years sorting seeds before he’s allowed to apply again, and he himself is gaining weight and losing strength, his hands coarse and his back sore from bending, but it doesn’t matter. Monty is allowed to live, and so will Octavia. She’ll come back, and they’ll build from there. One step at a time.

And hopefully their sector won’t be on the list for the next population reduction.

Monty stays over a few odd nights here and there, and Bellamy suspects it has something to do with him looking his mother in the eye after he got caught growing pot, but if he’s honest, he has to admit that it’s equally possible Monty is just honoring some promise given to O, take care of my idiot big brother, and make sure he doesn’t worry himself sick. Company helps and it doesn’t; it feels weird to have someone around again, and someone who, despite having lived with Octavia, doesn’t really speak the Blake language Bellamy is so used to. Monty only says things once, and behind his overwhelming calm there is a cold, cold anger that doesn’t flash or erupt, but waits without sizzling out. It’s scarier than any fit of rage Bellamy’s ever had.

He has a point, of course he does. But Bellamy, you see, has a sister.

When the time comes for O’s appeal, it’s Monty, not Bellamy, who shows up in court to keep her brave. It’s an emergency shift, one of many, and Bellamy doesn’t even know why he’s surprised when it happens today of all days, because, really, he should’ve expected it. He has hours upon hours of mopping the floors without any news at all, so much time for thinking it makes his mind numb, and for once, he decides to do this Monty’s way. He doesn’t explode. He remembers.

O is already home when he arrives, taller and sharper around the edges, but he still holds her for long, long minutes, knowing, in this exact moment, that it was worth every single petty humiliation under the sun. She is here, alive and healthy, and she can live a normal life in the open now. Nothing else matters.

***

**age twenty six**

Bellamy is good with his mouth, in ways, he thinks sometimes, his mother must’ve been worried sick about back when he was in school. As a janitor, he doesn’t really have many opportunities to talk back to people, or maybe many encounters with people worth talking back to, but he does have time to let his mind wander. Time to listen, too; listen to rants, to small complaints and careless sighs, to feet dragging after prolonged shifts, and hands shaking in fruitless anger. People, it turns out, talk when you ask. And if you ask the right way, they talk quite a lot.

Bellamy is very good at asking the right way.

Technically, it’s not forbidden to talk politics even in the mess hall, but Bellamy still has a moment of panic when he realizes he just got himself into a two-hour verbal fight with some food production guy named Lee over Diana Sydney. It doesn’t start anything; doesn’t make people talk for days, or put him at a head of a revolution. But this is election year, and everyone talks to everyone, and Bellamy, too, is asked questions, not realizing, at first, that he’s asked more often than so many others. Having this much attention focused on him, his body strange and changed under his work clothes, feels like living hell, but what’s even worse is silence, silence and anger simmering quietly under his skin until it explodes, because truth is Bellamy isn’t like Monty, and he can only do things Monty’s way for so long.

Diana wins on Factory and Farm, and takes a Council seat among crowds cheering in mess halls as if this could actually change anything. Two years later she falls after a fucked up conspiracy attempt with some high ranking guards involved, and Bellamy is disgusted enough by what he hears that he agrees to an evening to drunkenness with Monty and his friend Harper.

He ends up not drinking after all, too scared about _random_ blood alcohol checks he’s been having more and more often lately. So when he says that one day, he swears to God, he’s just going to run himself, and shake it all up until those Council morons fall off their high horses, he’s stone cold sober.


	2. Pawn

**age thirty**

It’s Monty who comes up with the plan, and Bellamy is just angry enough to agree.

There isn’t any one grand reason, no turning point or significant moment of blind rage. Instead, there is an exercise in frustration; days upon days with busy hands and a restless mind, of O’s head bent over stitches, and Monty’s fingers dirty from the precious soil they have so little of. It’s months without running, and it’s years without change; years of buckets and mops, of rationed water and filthy clothes, of sneers and gawks, and the impossibility of movement which drives him up the wall. He hates everyone up there, hates them and their cushy Alpha lives, and for once in his life, he doesn’t care who knows.

In the end, it’s kind of surprising how little effort it takes to gather enough signatures to launch a campaign for a Council seat. Word gets around fast; Bell Blake, yeah, the tall guy, the guy who always has something to say over lunch. Of course I know him. I talked to him when he was cleaning on Factory, on Mecha, on Farm, on Hydra; he told me to stay away from that faulty air duct, got mouthy with a guard, brought me news about my kid in lockup. I heard people say he can’t go on Alpha, can’t get near any armory, and hey, there is one just by the Council chamber. Where do I sign?

Dear Council, enjoy your Catch Twenty fucking Two.

It’s a joke until it isn’t; until Bellamy realizes that he actually does have the signatures, and that he’s running, holy fuck, he’s running, and since, after Diana Sydney, none of the Alpha politicians tried to pose as a candidate for the people, he actually has a fighting chance. It’s absolutely absurd, given his criminal record and the way his skin crawls every time people stare at him, but also he’s angry, angry enough to still speak up time after time after time, and who knows? Maybe he’s just angry enough to shake things up, though probably not in the way people expect him to. At this point, they’d vote any clown in, just out of helpless rage.

It’s fine. He’ll be their clown if this is what they want. 

***

Or maybe he won’t.

The thing about having a project is that it’s addictive. It makes you churn numbers in your head, and listen with a different ear. It is, in itself, an act of rebellion; it fills endless hours of mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms, and wakes the parts of the mind the Council would rather see buried.

If Bellamy Blake has been outsmarting them since he was five, what can he think of now that he’s fully grown and furious?

As it turns out, the first thing he thinks of is that he needs more allies, and that, in itself, is the most dangerous thought of all.

The thing is, he needs an engineer for what’s forming in his head now, but they tend to be somewhere up there, locked in fancy offices with fancy tools, and Bellamy can only go so far. There is a deck on Mecha he sweeps regularly, and he picks up some news while he’s out there. There was an accident a month ago, and the Zero-G involved is still on light duty, recovering. She is, people say, the angry type. Won’t mind getting her hands a little bit dirty.

And if she doesn’t like his idea, worst case scenario is she’ll tell him to go fuck himself.

“You’re Raven, right?” he asks when he finally runs into her while cleaning workshops on Mecha, and she looks up at him with surprise hostility, as if he accidentally stepped on her foot.

“And who’re you?”

“Bellamy,” he says simply, and takes off his work glove to extend his hand to her in a polite greeting. Which she promptly ignores.

She knows exactly who he is, that’s immediately obvious. She has this look about her that people usually have right after they decide he’s an opportunistic Council cockroach, and anyway, it was stupid to count on her not recognizing him right away. There aren’t many people out there named Bellamy, and there sure as hell aren’t many who just announced their candidacy in the nearest election. If he were her, he wouldn’t trust himself either.

“Look, I’m not gonna waste your time pretending that I found you to discuss last year’s Unity Day costumes. I have a campaign idea, and I want a competent mechanic to check it out before I go out there and make promises. My friends said I should try asking you. So how would you like a side project?”

Well, maybe honesty is a good policy here; Raven gives him a once over, and while she still doesn’t take his hand, she loses a bit of the bite she greeted him with.

“Your friends, huh? What did they say?”

Bellamy can’t help but give her a smile.

“One of the best Zero-Gs we have. Might be angry enough to want to help.”

(Her left leg is trapped in some sort of a brace that looks heavy and unpleasant, and Bellamy has a nagging feeling that if she catches him looking at it, she _will_ tell him to go fuck himself.)

“Just for the record, I’m not gonna vote you. But you’re lucky, I’m bored,” she allows after a moment of silence. “Alright, I’ll bite. Ask away.”

“I wouldn’t need a star mechanic to solve something I can explain in five minutes. My shift ends in an hour. Wanna meet me for a game of chess?”

Well, since he’s asking so nicely.

***

Raven Reyes, it turns out, plays chess like her life depended on it, and for the first forty minutes of their meeting in the mess hall on Factory, they don’t do anything but move pieces around the board. It’s as if she needs to test him; to see what he’s made of before she trusts him with her advice, and Bellamy tries to show her his best. It’s not his most glorious moment, as far as campaign strategy goes; he appears, he thinks, direct rather than smooth, and truthful rather than confident, but he has a feeling that if Raven catches him on the smallest lie, she’ll never speak to him again. And if she is as smart as he needs her to be, she would catch him sooner or later.

There is a moment, just one, when he gets a little lost; when he sets a trap on the board, baiting Raven to save a pawn and leave her king vulnerable, because while she’s testing him, he might be testing her a little bit as well. 

Because, he thinks selfishly, it’s been so damn long since he last played chess.

Then Raven stares him down, and reaches for the board as if it means something; like he challenged her, and she’s trying to show him, and prove what she’s made of by choosing between the two moves he left her. Or so he thinks. Because Raven Reyes grabs her rook, saves both pawn and king, and has Bellamy checkmated in the next three moves.

After that, they go back to business. Yes. They definitely do.

“You did what?” asks Monty the next day, and Bellamy deliberately avoids his gaze as he considers his answers for whole three seconds.

“Approached a benched Zero-G and asked her how much would it cost us to build a probe that could check if Earth is survivable yet.”

“And?”

“She laughed in my face, then said to give her three months.”

***

It doesn’t escape anyone’s notice that Bellamy Blake started plotting with Raven Reyes, and the very next week, his shifts get magically moved from Mecha to Hydra, no, no reason, no reason at all. When he comes back home that evening, and finds Raven pacing in front of his quarters, he feels a sudden pang of guilt, because she looks tired, a lot more tired than she did when they first met. Did she get some double shifts for her trouble as well? Did he cause her even more headache on top of the mess she got into after that accident screwed up her leg?

The only reason why he doesn’t try apologizing is that he’s pretty sure she’d kick his ass.

“I figured it out,” she says as soon as she sees him. “Looked through spare parts on Mecha. They’re supposed to wait for when we need to fix dropships or whatever, but, fuck that. I like your probe idea better. We can use them.”

She looks so pleased with herself, despite the tiredness, that he can’t help but smile at her, too, maybe a little brighter than he should. Get a grip, Blake.

That’s why he asks her for another game of chess. Because he’s getting a fucking grip. Yeah, that’s why.

“I still don’t know if I’m gonna vote for you,” she warns, and for some reason, it makes him warm all over.

“Do I look like I’m courting your vote just now?”

She still hasn’t asked him if he hates the Ark so much that he just wants to be on the ground a century earlier, or if he has a practical reason behind it. All they talked about, really, was tech and materials and numbers, apart from that strange forty minutes of a chess game he’s been thinking about for four days now, because apparently he’s that pathetic. A smart girl tells him she won’t vote him, then beats him at chess without sacrificing pawns, and here he is, giving her doe eyes like some magnificent fool.

“You’ll lose again,” she warns, and suddenly Bellamy has to stop himself from reaching out to touch her hand.

(Why would he even touch her hand? It’s been seven years since he touched a person like this.)

“Looking forward to it.”

***

She kisses him first, while he’s walking her home after the game; kisses him with teeth, sharp and needy, and brave in ways he never managed to be. She wants him, it seems, to be someone up to the task, someone smart, and strong, and able to measure up to her. 

This is the only time he ever lies to her: looks straight ahead when she takes off his shirt, and pretends it’s not a big deal that she watches him in merciless, bright light of her standard issue light bulb. His bare arms, when she touches them, are not his own, his stomach changed, his legs weak and soft after seven years of not running, but it doesn’t really matter. When Raven takes off her brace, the ugly, half-healed gash on her knee doesn’t matter, either, or at least she pulls him away from it, and makes him focus on kissing her again, nothing to see here, move along. Nothing to see.

So after no more than a few minutes, he enters her blindly, their eyes slammed shut, and it’s a sad affair, rushed, and clingy, and strangely tender, as if they both needed something they had no clue how to ask for, so they reached for what’s familiar instead.

When Bellamy finally rolls off her, they’re both left unsatisfied, and he feels her gaze on his back when he walks towards the door to finally kill those fucking bright lights that he’s never hated more. 

“You never asked why I need the probe,” he says as he pulls on his pants, finally surrounded by darkness.

“You wanna go to the ground. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Do you really wanna talk about probes now?”

It’s a test if he ever saw any, and he doesn’t even need to see her face to guess that much. It’s shocking that she would test him like this; that she would want him to prove something other than a sound strategy or anger bright enough to burn away the whole of fucking Alpha station. Bellamy has friends, of course he does, but even with them he takes care to keep himself focused, because if he thinks too much about what his life is, he’ll start screaming.

Of course he doesn’t realize just yet what Raven is asking of him. It’s been a long night, and a long four days, and test or no test, he’s too tired to act on anything but instinct.

So he returns to bed, and lies down behind her, his arm coming up around her waist. It’s as brave as he gets for now.


	3. Speech

It still takes him a few more days to work on fine details of his speech, and he isn’t really sure if he did a good job until Kane _accidentally_ happens upon him the day after the rally, and gives him a piece of his mind. He is, Bellamy learns, irresponsible and dangerous, and borderline criminal for making people hope for a thing they can’t have. It’s been made clear, over and over again, that humanity can’t go back to the ground for another century. He should just get used to the thought, and stop trying to win himself a better life by preying on others’ dreams.

Kane says all this, and a lot of other things as well, but what Bellamy hears is: “We saw you. We noticed you. And we’re scared.”

Good.

After that, he goes all day pretending that he isn’t scared at all; that he isn’t replaying Kane’s arguments over and over in his head, or reviewing his own with harsher and harsher scrutiny. The Ark’s gene pool is getting smaller with every passing decade: true. There is more and more infertility and genetic mutations in every generation: also true. If they wait another century on their one child rule, the gene pool might be too small to sustain a healthy population: true. Most likely true. True enough to worry about it, and try looking for different solutions.

If Bellamy Blake is Council, and he discovers a family with an illegally born child, he will blow the Ark to pieces before he can bring himself to float anyone: most definitely true.

So he doesn’t try charming or convincing, and he’s very careful to not make promises he might not be able to keep. Instead, he sticks to facts as he knows them: the scientists who made estimates for when Earth would be survivable again were in shock, and they worked on partial data from equipment that was being destroyed even as they were taking their measurements. If you just listened to the few old people who still live on the Ark, you’d know that after a few years, even some of the scientists themselves weren’t sure of their readings, and Bellamy listened. He cleaned their bathrooms, and they were lonely, so he listened. So it’s worth a shot. Because the Ark as it is is unacceptable, and they need to do something. He can’t promise that Earth is survivable, but not even trying to check if it is is the height of stupidity.

Okay, maybe he doesn’t quite say it like that.

He’s still a bit stiff when he speaks in public, pulled tight and spread thin when so many eyes and ears are on him, be smart, Bellamy, be smart. Don’t let them notice you.

But if he doesn’t speak, who will?

***

Life doesn’t stop just because Bellamy Blake gets into politics, and so after the rally, he gets his bucket and his mop, and goes back to mopping up Hydra. The evening shift won’t work itself, though why they even need an evening cleaning shift is a mystery to everyone involved. Bellamy guesses it has to do with keeping them busy.

Inevitably, he ends up thinking about Raven, even though technically, he shouldn’t. He should focus on important stuff now; on policy and strategy, and thinking his way out of this whole mess. He can’t waste time on thinking about how he freaked out when a pretty girl saw him naked.

(About how he freaked out when he saw himself, or how strange it is to see and hear himself every day. The Council, he feels, is in every inch of his skin; in the way his thoughts unravel around impossible catches, and the way his back hurts after long hours of cleaning. Everything in him revolves around them, around their law and their spaceship, and that’s what he should focus on, not on the way his breath hitched when Raven Reyes pulled on his belt.

Except it’s all connected, isn’t it?)

The next time he sees Raven, it’s in an empty workshop after hours. She looks tired and prickly, and Bellamy is starting to think this is just a regular look on her, except she doesn’t really let him linger on the discovery, too busy talking him through sketches of the probe she brought on a small handscreen. The design is neat and elegant, which he knows from the fact that he doesn’t understand at least half of it, but even he can tell how practical it is, how frugal and tight, not a single part underused or wasted. While the tech details of the probe remain beyond him, he does learn a thing or two about the hand that drew it; it’s a hand, he reads, that doesn’t do fireworks or frills, and most definitely doesn’t take for granted. 

Raven tries to pace the workshop while she talks, and Bellamy thinks she tries it out of habit, then stops short and almost hits her brace with a tight fist in frustration when her knee acts up again. It’s no wonder she agreed to help him, he realizes suddenly. She’s on the mend, and from what he saw, her bosses have been relegating her to simple tasks she could’ve done with her eyes closed when she was ten.

What a fucking waste.

They’re yet to talk about the night they shared, and so Bellamy is probably out of line when he reaches to touch the wrist of Raven’s free hand, the one curled in a fist. 

“You miss it, don’t you?” he asks like he would ask pretty much anyone he’s watched for long enough. “Zero-G?”

Raven puts the handscreen on the table with a bit more force than strictly necessary, and bites her lip. It’s answer enough in itself.

“Cut the crap,” she says, her eyes suddenly fixed on him. “You don’t have to sweet talk me. Do you want your probe or not?”

He does. Of course he does. But that’s not what he meant. Not that it matters now.

***

It’s not about Raven, except it totally is, or maybe Bellamy Blake is just enough of a melodramatic asshole to imagine that it all comes together in the end, his campaign and this girl he can’t stop thinking about even though now is the worst time to get distracted with any things personal. He imagines this is what Monty would tell him, if he actually had the guts to ask for Monty’s opinion, but as it is, all he gets is a few exasperated eyerolls, and a piece of advice he’s definitely not ready to follow.

“Quit trying to sound like Kane or Griffin. If I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t trust you further than I could throw you after what you just said.”

But it doesn’t compute, doesn’t come together right. If Bellamy is trying to make a grab for power, then he _is_ just like them, or maybe even like Diana Sydney, or like Jaha in the best case scenario. He can be himself and keep mopping the floors, or he can rise up and be like them, no real third option in sight, because Bellamy Blake, no matter how smart he is, often has trouble seeing a third option.

Raven can, he knows. But he doesn’t remember about it until later.

***

Sophie suggests that he learns a few sentences in Spanish as an afterthought, without real fire in it.

It’s not really a meeting they’re having, more like a small get-together after dinner turned into impromptu campaign talk at the Blakes’. Both Bellamy and Octavia are busy with stitches, because apparently this particular uniform needs to be fixed as quickly as humanly possible, and if it is, there might be a favor to collect, so Monty, Monroe and Sophie simply gather around them for company, and in no time at all, they start tossing ideas around.

Sophie is a fellow janitor, and one that spends her fair share of time on Mecha, so it makes sense that she would suggest this, and even be able to jot down a handy cheat sheet on Bellamy’s palm; a hello and a goodbye, and a fiery slogan that apparently gets repeated a lot between hammers and screws.

It’s a thing that’s done here and now; Mecha still speaks Spanish quite a lot, and those who campaign there know that the right word spoken at the right moment can butter people up like nothing else. So Bellamy starts studying Sophia’s handwriting on his skin without much hesitation, in for a penny, in for a pound, and even as his tongue stumbles over unfamiliar phrases, he feels right. Feels like he’s working, doing something towards his goal, because apparently he has a goal now. How did that even happen? No matter. The meeting on Mecha is in two days, and that’s plenty of time to learn.

He doesn’t think of Raven at all as he mutters strange syllables under his breath all throughout the next work day, until he feels like he has a good grasp on them. It is, he tells himself, an act of kindness; a gesture of understanding, and an invitation to talk.

So what is he gonna do if they speak Spanish back at him?

By the end of the day, his hand feels heavy and sweaty, and once he finishes work, he scrubs it furiously before he even changes out of his janitor’s uniform. Once he’s clean and in civilian clothes, he heads straight to Raven’s like it’s important, somehow; like it can’t wait until after dinner, like he can’t be bothered to come up with an excuse. Like the whole point is that there is no excuse.

His hand is still reddened when he knocks at Raven’s door, but she’s too busy being surprised by seeing him to focus on fine details. He waits patiently to be invited in, waits to be invited to sit at the empty, austere table, then reaches out to grab Raven’s wrist gently.

“Look, I didn’t know how to talk to you about that night because I’m an awkward fool, and I haven’t had sex since forever. I don’t like being looked at. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t move away when he touches her, and when he starts speaking, she tilts her head like he’s finally making sense, and things are slowly coming together until she can actually bear to look at him. For once, he doesn’t mind.

“So what are you gonna do about it?” she challenges, but when he gives her a small smile, she does smile back at him slowly, as if it was a decision.

He undresses her patiently after that, with kisses pressed against her sternum and hips, and when she pulls on his shirt, he bites his lip, then slowly lets go, and settles where he wants to be, his head between Raven’s legs. It’s easier to see her differently now; see her for the person she is, and not the phenomenon that keeps boggling his mind, and so he catches her eye before he gives her a first slow lick, and takes her hand as if they both needed something to hold on to. He wants her to have something out of this, too, since he’s doing all the profound soul-searching on her very skin, and he only calms when the fingers of her free hand grasp on his hair greedily like she was making a point, for him or for herself, it’s hard to tell, really. What he knows is that she hooks her legs over his shoulders, and arches with a needy, deep moan, then pulls him up for a kiss with more affection than he’s ready for, but he’s gonna take it anyway.

He owes her that much.

They sleep side by side later on, Raven’s face pressed against his bare chest, and she says things into the night, I need, and I want, and I hate, then lets him kiss her forehead in a calm gesture he gets from God only knows where, not that it really matters. It doesn’t matter, either, that he doesn’t understand why Raven hooks her good leg over his thigh, then takes his hand and puts it on the small of her back with rare determination, demanding comfort she somehow knows he’s willing to give.

He speaks English the next day on Mecha, because that’s all he can do with honesty for now, and lays out everything Kane ever accused him of. He is an anarchist with no government experience, a scorned janitor with a chip on his shoulder, and he needs to be out of this fucking spaceship before there inevitably comes a day when he wakes up wanting to set it on fire. He has a personal stake in all this, because of course he does. Because the Ark is an anthill of two thousand people, all humanity reduced to a small town in the back of beyond, and everything is personal here, no matter how you slice it. They need to think of a way to go to the ground. They need to talk about how easy it is up here to make life and death decisions. About how tiny the Council is, compared to how big it could be.

Other people, he realizes, could’ve said it all as well. But if he doesn’t speak, and speak the truth this time, it’s going to eat him from inside out.


	4. People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adult life is being a pain in my ass, but I try to persevere.

As campaign proceeds, Raven worms her way into Bellamy’s inner circle day by day, until Bellamy has a feeling that Monty actually started to like her better than him, and it makes him happier than it logically should. Raven Reyes, he learns, is a lonely type; she works hard in her workshop, no matter how much she hates the too easy assignments that she’s getting, then works even harder on getting better, until her doctors tell her to slow down before she hurts herself with too intense exercise. 

(Her doctors, what a joke. There is one young doctor who is idealistic enough to give a damn, and one older Zero-G who just won’t shut up because he’s been mentoring Raven since she was thirteen, and he isn’t about to stop now, even if he’s actually been promoted from Zero-G to ship command years ago. It is, it seems to Bellamy, easier for Raven to ignore hours of medical cautionary talk than one stern look from Sinclair.)

But as Raven becomes a part of Bellamy’s team, she also seems, somehow, further, lost between rallies and speeches. He’s good at speeches now. He became so, so good at speeches.

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, now that he’s running for real. The people, whoever they are, come first. Raven seems to understand that as she works tirelessly on his project, as if it was becoming more important to her by the day.

Like it was replacing something. 

“The probe is one thing,” she tells him, displaying some strange diagram on her tablet. “But the actual dropships? Greenhouses? Irrigation? Water purification? If you don’t wanna half-ass it, there is work here for years.”

Maybe she should be running for Council, not him.

No, she shouldn’t. Her fingers curl like talons around her screwdrivers whenever she hears anything about tactics and speeches, and Bellamy knows now, from small secrets she shares sometimes when he holds her at night, knows about hunger and gossip and swaying steps, _dream on, pajarita, you’ll be just like this_. Raven is sharp and loud in her disapproval because, by nature, she forgives too easily, swallows her anger as if it could keep her warm, and now that she isn’t a child anymore, she would do anything at all to shield herself from that fatal flaw of hers.

So she works frantically as if she was responsible for getting humanity to the ground single-handedly, and Bellamy is attentive enough to know that she does it because she wants to get out.

But not quite attentive enough, between negotiations and plots, to realize that she wants to get out in more ways than just one.

***

He wins the race by the skin of his teeth, and when he hears the results announced, he can’t believe his own ears for solid thirty seconds. He’s in Factory mess hall, surrounded by friends, and allies, and supporters, but the image that gets out to the Ark at large is one scandalous picture someone snapped with a tablet in a moment of joy. Octavia Blake, tears in her eyes, jumps into her brother’s arms with a victorious whoop, and he picks her up as if she was still the little girl he used to hide under the floor, and spins her playfully as his hands secure her from a fall. It’s defiant and offensive in its childishness, brother and sister up in arms, one standing firmly with the other, and when Bellamy sees the picture afterwards, it occurs to him that maybe population control isn’t the only reason why siblings aren’t allowed on the Ark. 

People tend to fight harder when they have more people to fight for.

But there is no time for his philosophy now, no time for triumph or petty satisfaction that comes with walking the corridors of Alpha Station to his first Council session. He made a promise, and now he has work to do. If he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to play the game exactly by the rules. And so he forgets the picture sooner than he probably should.

Council is loud and tedious in the most predictable way; full of deliberations he needs to learn about, and subtle relationships he needs to start understanding as soon as possible. Doctor Griffin will always go against Kane, but only up to a point. Williams likes to listen before she says a single word, but once she does, her mind is almost set in stone. Jaha is pompous and stubborn, but not dismissive. And each and every person in this room would rather stab themselves in the eye than work with that goddamned anarchist Blake.

It’s funny how he used to think that his anger would melt away once he had work he didn’t hate, something engaging to wrap his mind around. Instead, he’s angrier than ever before, but instead of burning under his skin or exploding, his rage seeps lazily into his words and his limbs until he’s what they expect him to be – defiant and vulgar, and ostensibly oblivious to all things government. They want an anarchist? He’ll give them an anarchist.

“You’re making enemies,” Monty tells him after the first few weeks, and Bellamy actually laughs bitterly as he salutes him with a standard issue mug full of standard issue tea.

“Good. I don’t think I’d be able to fucking look at myself if they wanted to be my friends.”

Oh yes, he feels so good in his own skin now, truer and sharper, not at all the person they make him to be as he attends meeting after meeting, calculated outbursts intertwined with negotiations from hell. That’s why he sleeps so easily, especially when, once in a blue moon, he makes time to stay over at Raven’s.

He’s just busy, you see.

***

Raven bullies her way into a spacewalk five weeks into Bellamy’s Council term, and it almost ends in a tragedy.

It was a simple malfunction, Sinclair explains later, as they both sit by her hospital bed way into the night. It was a simple malfunction, and those things happen, but because of her injured leg Raven couldn’t react as quickly as she usually would, and so by the time she managed to fix this complicated thing Bellamy doesn’t really understand, she was almost out of oh-two. No, she couldn’t have just left it half-done. More people would’ve died if she had.

As it is, no one is dead. There is just Raven, pale and a little worse for wear. No brain damage, doctor Griffin assures them, but no more Zero-G for her, either. She can’t be a star mechanic based on her brilliant mind alone, and sending her out there with that heart murmur of hers was a risk from the start. Now, given the leg, she’s benched for life.

There isn’t even any need for them to sit with her overnight; she isn’t in danger or in a coma, just sleeping off the horrible day as her body heals itself yet again. It makes Bellamy’s blood boil with a different kind of anger, sharp and bright, and surprising in its intensity; the kind of anger he associates not with closed doors and dirty rags, but with Aurora’s ruffled skirt, and O’s return from the Skybox.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he hisses out when she’s finally awake, and they’re left alone in the morning. “What were you even…”

“Get out!” she spits right back at him, surprising him with how quickly she spills over, how easily she tears up in anger when she never did in pain. “Take your fucking… Just get out.”

So he does; he gets out and walks strange Alpha corridors in insomniac haze, then makes it to the Council chamber to doctor Griffin’s visible surprise. Visible approval of his statesmanship, too, just look at him – tired and barely standing, but bravely abandoning a loved one’s bed to fulfill his public duty.

It makes him feel sick.

So he returns to the infirmary at lunch, fingers clasped on a chessboard he brought in as a feeble excuse. Quietly, he takes the chair he’s been in the whole night, and sits with his forearms resting on his knees, his fingers combing through his hair nervously. It’s fine if she doesn’t wanna talk to him. He’s staying with her anyway, until she kicks him out again.

“I shouldn’t have yelled,” he says clearly after a moment, even though, technically, he didn’t. There isn’t, you see, a nice and neat way to apologize for whispering venom.

(For weeks of fumbling and seething, and not hearing the things she was saying even as he was comforting her with gentle touch, it hurts and I hate it. I don’t know what to do with this mess we found ourselves in.)

“You look like hell,” is all she says, feathers ruffled, all show, like she was hoping he’d see the first obstacle, and run like hell.

“Speak for yourself.”

Raven’s forgiveness comes just like he knew it would, with a bitten lip and an extended hand, come here, touch me. It means something that you came back. It means something that you didn’t run.

No, it doesn’t. But he can’t exactly tell her he thinks she should make him work harder.

He falls asleep on the chair, his head resting on Raven’s mattress, and wakes up as angry and scared as ever, with Raven’s hand stroking his hair absently. The clock on the infirmary wall tells him he missed the afternoon Council session, missed the chance to yet again try convincing the people who hate him to let him launch a mission they don’t believe in, and for once, he doesn’t care. It’s hard to care about policy on three hours of sleep.

For the first time in eight years his world shrinks yet again into the size of a room, even though technically it doesn’t have to. Raven wasn’t really in any danger once she was brought back into the fragile safety of the Ark, and so his vigil by her bed right now is pure melodrama, selfish and unnecessary, except she takes his hand as soon as he wakes, and just like that, he’s glued to his chair for a week if need be. 

“Do you even want to go to the ground?” he asks, his quiet voice unpleasantly resonant in the silence of the room.

“It’s complicated, okay?”

“I’ve got time.”

Does he now? That’s a first.

***

He listens more than he speaks for the next few days, and misses a few Council meetings for good measure. It’s probably high time that he did.

Raven’s story comes in bits and pieces, more read between lines than told directly, and it’s nothing new, exactly. It is, rather, a reminder of things he forgot about her, of things he didn’t know how to process or handle, but now he holds on to every scrap, and out of them, he manages to piece together a person he can understand, made of flesh and blood rather than fire and smoke. Raven wants discoveries and thrills, she loves her stars and her engines, and hates the Ark with a passion burning low and hot, like it’s something melted into her since before she could hold a screwdriver. 

No, she doesn’t want to go. But she doesn’t want to stay, either.

He’s rightfully ashamed of all the things he neglected before, even though they were right in front of him: not just quick anger and quick forgiveness buried under a thin layer of bravado, or a deep fear of being left to deal with problems alone covered hastily with a handy dose of quick wit. There is need for warmth and need for adventure, but above all, there is a need to be heard even when she can’t find the words to speak. Raven is an open book if you only bother to read, and so he bothers now with shaky hands, seeing now what he should’ve seen from the start.

Raven is more than her injured leg, but if you don’t understand about the leg, you don’t understand Raven at all.

“I can’t even do Zero-G, and that’s supposed to be all brains and hands,” she says in a voice he can barely hear. “What the fuck am I gonna do down there, plough fields?”

“Civil engineering. Communication. Repairs.”

“Bullshit.”

***

This time, there is no valuable lesson he gets to learn on Raven’s broken skin; no wisdom he acquires through her, or epiphany that leads him straight to her bed. He simply stays with her for a few days, just to make sure the dizziness isn’t making a comeback, and maybe he’s just a bit more cautious once they both return to their duties, dull repairs and pointless arguments, until their eyes and hands grow heavy around their tools and tablets. 

How did that line go? _For the people?_ Yeah, good luck with that.

Raven gets stuck on the probe two weeks after her benching, and for the first time in ages Bellamy finds her not in the common areas or her room on Mecha, but in his own quarters on Factory, drinking water with O and explaining a tech problem he’s heard about three times already, but hasn’t been able to suggest any useful solution yet.

“That’s just number soup here,” says O eventually, tired of listening to them go through the same circles over and over again. “You can’t solve this because that’s how it is. Too many variables. You won’t solve it on a tablet. Crash- test this shit and see what happens.”

So, are they gonna float him if he launches an unauthorized probe?

Raven sleeps restlessly that night, curled up against him chastely due to O’s presence, and in the morning she looks about as rested as he is, so for once in his goddamned life, Bellamy Blake does the smart thing. He sends a message to Jaha, steals his old bucket and mop from storage, and cleans Raven’s workshop from top to bottom as she brings Sinclair in, and tries again and again to run a simulation that would clear up the variables, narrow down the scope, do anything at all towards avoiding the necessary crash test they just don’t have the resources for.

It all comes to nothing, of course it does. It doesn’t even make them sleep better the next night when they think that finally they worked together, like the team they should be, because as good as teamwork feels, their minds are too weighed down with the reality of what they have to achieve in the morning. 

What he does doesn’t help. But it’s still the right thing to do.


End file.
